Frustrated over the marginalization of women in film, indie director Allison Anders convened a summit—part suffragette rally, part catharsis, part 60-hour sleepover—at the Miramar Hotel, in Santa Barbara, in April 2000. The ripple effects of that gathering and its “50/50” manifesto continue to spread today, even as a new movement rocks the industry.

Before Timothy Leary and the Beatles, LSD was largely unknown and unregulated. But in the 1950s, as many as 100 Hollywood luminaries—Cary Grant and Esther Williams among them—began taking the drug as part of psychotherapy. With LSD research beginning a comeback, the authors recount how two Beverly Hills doctors promoted a new “wonder drug,” at $100 a session, profoundly altering the lives of their glamorous patients, Balaban included.